Could we be heading into an era of much less intrusive safety systems? Are we finally waving goodbye to the infuriating experience of feeling like a car’s lane-keep assist, driver-attention or hazard-warning systems are fighting against you, rather than poised to save your skin if you need them? Not before time, car makers are starting to get smarter, spurred on by new, more stringent Euro NCAP tests that kick in this summer and will make more of how well the technology works, rather than simply whether it’s fitted. So if the car can tell you’re looking forward, alert and paying attention, it can delay any intervention. But if it senses the driver is distracted or tired, then it’ll jump in earlier. NCAP calls it the ‘Driver State Link’ – ensuring driver and tech work together, rather than at odds with each other, which is regularly the case at the moment. When driver-assistance systems first started to be developed, car manufacturers tended to take the cheapest and easiest way to appease Euro NCAP, rather than the much trickier direction of developing robust tech that works for the driver and doesn’t just score cheap NCAP points. I’ve driven two cars recently that feel like a big step in the right direction. The systems in both BMW’s new iX3 and the Polestar 3 are much less intrusive, to the point where for the first time in many years, I didn’t turn off the lane-keep assist – which used to be part of my ‘pre-flight’ ritual in every car I drove. While shortcut buttons and increasingly easy ways to deactivate the assistance systems are progress, it would be much more helpful if many drivers didn’t feel the need to disengage them completely, because you never know when you might actually need them to step in for real. So clever and less intrusive ADAS is great, but it’s only a start. I’ve also driven several, mainly Chinese, cars recently – the worst of which was the BYD Seal 6 – where the level of invasive interaction led me to cover (and even consider ripping out!) the driver-monitoring camera just to stop its persistent nagging. We know how quickly the Chinese respond to constructive criticism, so I imagine it won’t be long before we see progress, and new cars cease to be incredibly annoying to drive.
